


Sensations: an awakening

by LeapAngstily



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Sense8, M/M, Medication, Possible Misdiagnosis, Schizophrenia, Telepathy, nonlinear storytelling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-11-13 20:20:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11192706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeapAngstily/pseuds/LeapAngstily
Summary: Sense8 AU. Artist, athlete, model, defense attorney, car salesman - a cluster of five becomes six when they discover another one of theirs.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This idea doesn't leave me alone, so I'm taking you down with me. I know more or less where I'm going with this story, and it seems my brain won't leave me alone before I finish it, so I'm fairly certain I'll be updating regularly. That said, this prologue is the only thing I've written so far, as I started it as a oneshot. I just needed to get it out here to convince myself the rest of this story was worth writing as well.
> 
> It definitely helps if you're at least vaguely familiar with Sense8 and its basic premise, although I'll try not to get too deep into the series canon.

 

 

 

The Geffen Contemporary quiets down for the night, leaving behind only an eerie hush and an unmistakable smell of drying paint. There’s only one person sitting in the gallery, shoulders hunched and colours stuck to his skin, staring at the 3x2-meter canvas covered with the still wet oil paint.

If someone had told Leo a year ago that one year ahead, he would be doing live painting performances in Los Angeles for more money than his whole studio apartment in Buenos Aires is worth, he would’ve thought they were making fun of his passion.

Second place in an internationally acclaimed art competition followed by a 6-page in-depth article in an American art journal, and suddenly it seems all his dreams are coming true.

Hence why he is now sitting in a closed art museum staring at his own painting – not his best piece by a long shot, but still impressive enough to have warranted a four-digit offer within five minutes of being finished earlier that day. The painting will stay in the Geffen until the end of his exhibition, before being shipped off to New York to grow dusty in some collector’s vault.

“I don’t get it.”

The voice startles Leo out of his thoughts, makes him literally bounce five inches up from his chair before settling back down. “How’d you get in here?”

“No idea.”

The newcomer appears to be around his age. His dark hair is sticking up to every direction, like he washed it and went to bed without letting it dry. He is dressed in pyjama pants and a worn out AC Milan T-shirt with torn neckline revealing one of his shoulders. There’s an honest-to-God toothbrush hanging from the corner of his mouth.

In short, he definitely doesn’t belong.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you.” The newcomer walks past Leo’s chair and unapologetically steps over the barriers meant to keep people from touching the artwork. “Really, I don’t get it. What’s it trying to say?”

“Art’s not supposed to be explained.”

Leo considers warning him about the wet paint, but something stops him when the man ghosts his fingers over the darkest corner of the canvas, just a breath away from smearing the near-black colours. He doesn’t touch.

The man looks over his shoulder at Leo, obviously bemused with this politically correct answer. “You’re a shitty delusion, you know that? You’re supposed to help me with the answers I can’t figure out on my own.”

He pulls the toothbrush out of his mouth and spits the remaining foam on the floor. Leo makes a disgruntled noise and stands up, ready to call the security before the message sinks in. Delusion?

“Where do you think we are?” he asks curiously, because he _knows_ what this is, even if his companion doesn’t.

“Hell should I know. I was in my bathroom and then—”

“Where’re you from? What time is it? What’s your name?”

“Shut up!” the man hisses and the toothbrush falls from his fingers, making a soft clicking sound when it hits the marble of the sink. And then the man is gone as soon as Leo blinks his eyes, and there is no sink, and there is no toothbrush, and Leo is alone in the art gallery again.

The dark corner of his painting suddenly looks much more fitting, like he had found a puzzle piece he didn’t even know was missing.

Like it belongs.

“Pinoe?” His call echoes from the empty walls – most of them still waiting to hold the new works he’s supposed to paint in the coming days of the exhibition – and he feels stupid for thinking she could hear him like this.

“Nice colours.” Megan is sitting cross-legged on the bench Leo vacated only moments earlier, a cup of steaming hot tea cradled between her hands. Leo can smell the spicy aroma like it’s him holding the cup. No, he is the one holding the cup, sitting down, looking up at Megan who’s studying the painting more closely now. He sips the green tea experimentally and hisses softly when he burns his tongue.

“Watch it, that’s my mouth you’re burning!” Megan snaps, but she’s smiling as she turns back to the painting. “The obnoxious yellows in the middle— that’s Cris, isn’t it?”

“I met a sixth one,” Leo blurts out instead of answering the question, “at least I think I did.”

“You sure?” Megan is sitting by his side in an instant, excitement and disbelief coming off her in waves. Leo can feel the same giddiness in his chest, but he’s not sure whether it’s his own or Megan’s. Maybe there’s no difference.

“I was the only one in here, no eye contact with anyone new.” Leo hands the tea cup back to her and she takes a tiny sip before her brown eyes are back on him. “And I could _feel_ him. Like he was in my head, except really vague, like an afterthought or something.”

“Where is he? What country?” Megan urges him on, eyes shining with keen interest, and Leo is half-surprised she’s not rushing out to find their missing piece already. “What’s his name?”

“I don’t know,” Leo admits, his shoulders dropping in defeat. “He said he didn’t get it – the painting – and called me a delusion before disappearing. I think he’d just woken up, though? Maybe European?”

“Maybe we should ask Cris or Nigel, then? I don’t know how this works, but it might be easier to sense someone on the same continent? Like when we first connected?” Megan shrugs with one shoulder, her excitement waning a little as she realizes they have next to nothing on this new member of their cluster.

“No,” Leo decides after a moment’s hesitation, “don’t say anything to the others just yet. Let’s just see if he connects with anyone else on his own. We don’t know why it took so long for us to find him – we don’t want to crowd him, right?”

“Fine, we’ll do this your way.” Megan stands up and stretches her arms above her head. “I’m gonna catch some sleep now, early training tomorrow. You should head out too, this place’s creepy at night.”

Leo answers her with a non-committal hum, not making any move to pack his things for the night.

“And Leo?” Megan is looking at the painting again, her eyes fixed on the dark corner that looks like it belongs, albeit uncomfortably. “He might just be lost – we can’t wait forever for him to find us.”

She’s gone then, and so is the spicy scent of her tea, leaving Leo craving for more.

 

 

Gigi wakes up to his phone ringing. The digital clock on his nightstand reads 6:04.

There are only a very few people whose calls he’s set to ring at this hour, so he’s fast to get up and grab the device from on top of the drawer. _Riccardo._

“Riccardo, is everything alright?” This is not the first and probably not the last time his patient has called him at an odd hour. In fact, Gigi encourages it, well aware how important it can be to get the help when the problem is acute.

“You need to come and get me.” Riccardo’s voice is paper-thin, just barely audible through the line. “The anti-psychotics aren’t working. I’m seeing them again.”

“Who’s them?” Gigi asks gently even as he hurries to pull on his clothes. “Is it _him_? Or one of the others?”

“No, not him.” There’s a long silence on the line, Riccardo considering his next words carefully. He sounds scared when he continues, “This one felt _real_. Like I knew him – and he knew me – even though I’ve never seen him before.”

“I’m on my way,” Gigi assures Riccardo as he takes his car keys and slips out of the front door. “Pack a few things, I’ll call the clinic on the way to see if we can get you committed for a few days. At least until we can figure out what’s wrong with the meds.”

 “It was so real though…” Riccardo sounds so wistful, practically yearning for something true.

It breaks Gigi’s heart.


	2. Rebirth

 

 

 

Giving birth is nothing like Ricky imagined. For the briefest moment that takes only a fraction of a second but feels like an eternity, he is connected to every single _sensorium_ in the world, his consciousness flashing through their minds, searching for the ones for him, the ones he will choose as his children.

“Ricky, you can’t do this! You’re not ready – _he_ won’t be able to handle it!” Clarence’s voice echoes in his head, his desperation mixing with Ricky’s, but for a completely different reason. Clarence has seen what they do to newborn clusters, doesn’t want Ricky to go through a pain like that.

But Ricky has no choice.

“I’m doing this for him. I have to do this.” Ricky looks up to Clarence’s eyes, a wordless prayer, begging him to understand, to help him make it safe for his children. “You can’t be here when it happens. This has to be a secret. _They_ can never know.”

Tears are stinging his eyes, but he makes no attempt to break the eye contact. Clarence may have chosen the wrong side, but Ricky knows he can still reach him, can still feel him inside his own mind. The connection will always be there, no matter where they go or how long they stay on blockers.

“Please, Clarence. I need to keep him safe.” No more than a whisper.

Clarence’s shoulders sag in defeat – an utterly unfamiliar look on him – and he takes a bottle of pills from his pocket. “I won’t tell them. But that’s all I can do – you can’t come to me for help ever again, because then I _will_ know you did it, and if I know, they will know.”

“Thank you,” Ricky whispers into the empty space left behind as Clarence swallows the blockers.

He can feel them now, his children, all six of them. He closes his eyes and reaches out to them, calling for them, binding together the singular minds swimming in the constant flow of consciousness. They shall never again be alone.

“Ricky, what have you done?” Andrea’s voice in the back of his mind, his presence soothing and comforting, like a warm blanket wrapping around Ricky’s very being.

_He_ shall never again be alone.

 

 

Leo has barricaded himself inside his studio for the fifth day in a row, unfinished paintings laid down on every surface of the room by now, but he still keeps painting. The competition deadline is fast approaching and he has nothing to show for it, only one piece of garbage after another.

He hasn’t showered, he’s barely slept, and the only reason he’s eaten regularly is Kun who keeps barging with the key copy he got made without Leo’s permission sometime after his last lock-down. To show for his devotion, there’s now a pile of half-empty take-away containers covering one of Leo’s failed works.

He reaches to the side to get another paintbrush, but before he can reach the supply table, the thin handle of the brush connects with his hand in mid-air.

“What the—?” Leo lifts his gaze, fully expecting to see his friend with another McDonald’s bag, but instead he comes face to face with a dark-haired man he’s never seen before. There’s indescribable warmth in the stranger’s eyes and his smile is infectious – Leo finds himself smiling back to him, even though rationally he knows he should be calling the police.

“Take care of them,” the stranger tells him, except he’s not really saying it aloud, only in Leo’s head.

He is gone in the blink of an eye, the paintbrush in Leo’s hand the only proof he was ever there.

Leo tells himself he really should get some sleep if he’s hallucinating already – last time that only happened on day nine – but instead, he dibs the brush to a new shade of red and keeps painting.

When Kun comes in without knocking some three hours later carrying two pizza boxes, Leo is sitting on the floor staring at his finished work, vivid colours blending together, revealing a ghost of a face he could swear he never meant to paint.

“I think this is it,” he tells Kun, stunned but also proud of what he’s accomplished.

“I think so too.” The amazement in Kun’s voice is enough to convince Leo he’s found the piece that is going to win him his first international acclaim.

 

 

Cris is sitting in hair & makeup for the next runway in Paris Fashion Week when he sees a flash of a man almost as beautiful as him in the mirror, looking straight at him with his deep brown eyes.

He snaps his head around to look over his shoulder, but he sees only the hairdresser who seems pissed off at having her work interrupted. Cris apologizes quickly and turns back to allow her keep doing her magic. The man is gone when he looks at the mirror again.

“It’s the nerves,” he tells himself quietly. The hairdresser snorts and gets back to work.

 

 

“I can’t take it! There’s nothing here!” Sameshima lets out a theatrical groan and throws herself over the piles of documents they’ve been studying for two days now in desperate attempt to find proof their client hadn’t been running the embezzlement ring on her own.

Homare salvages a handful of papers just before they slip off the table and gives them a cursory glance before setting them back on top of the pile. Nothing there either, at least nothing she can recognize as incriminating.

“There must be something we’re missing,” Sameshima grumbles and picks up the paper she was just studying. “It must be staring us in the face. If we could just figure it out…”

The office is empty aside from the small meeting room they’re in. Even the chief has left already – followed by the last handful of their co-workers – and they’re going to miss the last train home if they don’t wrap things up soon. It wouldn’t be the first time Homare slept on the office couch. Not even the first time this week.

Her phone is buzzing in the briefcase lying on the chair next to hers, and with a defeated sigh she fishes out the iPhone and lets out a string of curses unfitting for a lady when she sees the caller ID. She’d completely forgotten he was coming to Kobe tonight!

Sameshima is looking at her curiously now, any excuse to abandon the documents good enough for her. “Tsujikami-senpai?”

“He’s coming over tonight. I forgot.” Homare stares at the caller ID for a few seconds longer before accepting the call.

“I’m at the apartment,” Hiroaki tells her in a gentle voice, as if he can see Homare’s this close to breaking down in tears from pure exhaustion. “You still at the office? Want me to pick you up?”

“I can’t. The case—”

“Go, there’s nothing more we can do tonight,” Sameshima tells her quickly, already cleaning up the papers from the table, dividing them neatly into three piles: unread, potentially useful, and definitely useless. “Say hello to senpai from me.”

Homare gives her a grateful smile as she changes her answer mid-sentence, “Fine, could you please take me away from here?”

“I’m on my way.” She can hear Hiroaki’s smile in his voice before he hangs up the call.

She stops in the bathroom on her way out to fix her hair and makeup. A professional woman can never afford to look unkempt – it’s what her only female professor in the law school always used to tell her. Appearance is everything, even if that appearance is only necessary for the twenty-minute drive before she’s home.

She steps out of the office building and almost runs into a foreigner who’s standing right in front of the locked glass doors, dressed only in a fitted T-shirt and jeans despite the chilly night-air. She reflexively wraps her trench coat tighter around herself.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you,” she says in English, even though she shouldn’t be the one apologizing when he’s the one who scared her half to death.

“Don’t be, it was all my fault.”

Homare blinks and the man is gone as quickly as he appeared. She only realizes he hadn’t been speaking English when Hiroaki’s car pulls up to her and she slips into the passenger’s seat with a relieved sigh.

“Rough day?”

“All the better now that you’re here.”

She must’ve fallen asleep for a second out there. That’s what staring at fiscal declarations day after day does to you.

 

 

Nigel is out in central Hamburg, on the way back to the headquarters after a test drive with the brand new sports model from Mercedes-Benz. He stops at a red light and takes the chance to dial his business partner’s number and adjust his earpiece.

When he lifts his gaze back to the road, a man is standing in the middle of the crosswalk, staring at Nigel through the windshield. The crowd around him keeps moving, but he stays still, and for some unfathomable reason Nigel feels like he is looking right into his soul.

“Sorry, I gotta call you back.” He disconnects the call as the red light turns green and the man is still standing there, blocking his way.

He’s about to open the window and yell at the man, but the car behind him is faster, the horn blaring far too loudly in his ears.

The man is gone when Nigel looks at the road again. The guy behind him keeps honking until Nigel hits the throttle.

 

 

Megan has a feeling she’s being watched. It’s not necessarily a new feeling for her – she gets recognized a dozen times on an average day, and not nearly all of them simply come up and talk to her – but it is unusual for her to feel this way during a closed training session.

She takes another dash across the pitch and scores another goal past three of her teammates. She still cannot shake the feeling of someone’s eyes drilling their way through her skull, but when she turns around, there’s no one behind her.

“Fucking creep…” she grumbles to no one in particular as she starts jogging back to the centre of the pitch to get ready for another run.

There’s a moment she thinks she can hear a dog barking somewhere close by, but all she can see around her are the trainers and her teammates. No dogs. (She might be a tiny bit disappointed.)

She’s almost forgotten her paranoia when it’s her turn to run for the ball again. That’s when she sees him, an unfamiliar face in the otherwise empty stands. The man is sitting in the first row cross-legged, looking as if he belongs there.

Megan sees red – she knew it, there was someone watching her – and she deliberately aims her next shot right at him. He makes no move to dodge, the ball flying right past his head, actually brushing the lock of black hair sticking out above his left ear.

He _smiles_ , like the creep that he is.

“The fuck’re you shooting at, Pinoe?” her coach yells at her, as if she hadn’t seen the intruder in the stands.

“The stalker.”

“What stalker?”

Megan turns to point at the guy, but ends up waiving at the empty stands instead. The feeling of being watched still remains, though. The non-existent dog is barking again.

 

 

It’s dark. Everything hurts. He’s alive.

Those are the first three observations Riccardo’s brain offers him as he regains consciousness. The first one turns out to be false as soon as he opens his eyes – well, one eye, the other one seems to be covered with something – and realizes it’s not completely dark, the lights in the room are only dimmed.

Everything still hurts and he’s very much alive.

Somebody is also watching him.

“Where am I?”

His voice is raspy and his throat aches when he speaks, like it’s been days since he last said anything. Maybe it has been, he hasn’t exactly been keeping count.

“Don’t you remember?”

Dr. Buffon. Definitely Dr. Buffon sitting by the bed, Riccardo can see him in the corner of his uncovered eye.

He tries to turn and face him properly, but the movement is thwarted by bonds around his wrists. His fight or flight reflex hits in immediately and he jolts halfway up from the hospital bed in attempt to shake off the constraints. They got him! He wasn’t fast enough!

“Everything’s alright, Riccardo. You’re safe here.” Dr. Buffon’s voice is calm, gentle, but his hand on Riccardo’s chest is firm as he guides him to lie back down. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for two days now. We had to tie you down to make sure you couldn’t hurt yourself more than you already have. Now breathe, Riccardo.”

Riccardo takes a deep breath that makes his chest and head ache. Dr. Buffon is looking at him with wary eyes, but he lets out a relieved sigh when Riccardo doesn’t make another attempt to get up.

“Do you know where you are, Riccardo?”

“The hospital?” Riccardo knows it’s not Buffon’s clinic – he remembers every single room from all the times he’s been committed before – but there’s no mistaking the sterile stench or the looming white walls.

“San Rafaele Hospital,” Dr. Buffon helps him along, “Do you remember how you got here?”

He’d been running. Someone was following him, wherever he went, so he had kept running, hiding from people, not going home for days… They could access him through his eyes, they could control him, so he had to get rid of the—

“I tried to cut out my eyes.” Riccardo chuckles humourlessly, because even he knows it’s something you don’t say with a straight face, a bland emotionless statement like discussing the weather. “It seems I didn’t quite succeed.”

“You lost consciousness before you could finish. A passerby found you and called an ambulance. She probably saved your life.”

“Lucky me.”

Dr. Buffon is studying him, probably trying to determine whether he should be sedated again. Riccardo is more than familiar with how it feels to come off a strong batch of sedatives. He also knows what it feels like when the antipsychotics start finally kicking in.

“I’m not hearing them now,” he tells the doctor, letting the exhaustion drip into his voice. “I’ll be fine for now, I think. I know they’re not real.”

He’s not being completely honest and they both know it, but he needs to say it to convince himself that this time it will work – this time they will get the treatment right. His head is killing him, and he knows without even asking that his bandaged eye will probably never heal completely.

“I’ll go ask a nurse if we can get you something to eat. We can take off the constraints once I come back, alright?” Obviously Dr. Buffon doesn’t trust Riccardo not to try and hurt himself the moment he’s left alone.

The door closes behind him, leaving Riccardo alone with his thoughts and the constant feeling of being watched. That feeling has been with him as long as he can remember – it never goes away, not even when the meds are supposedly working.

“I know you’re here,” he calls into the empty room without lifting his head, closing his healthy eye for a moment. He can hear a shuffle of clothes as _he_ steps out of the darkness. “And I know you’re not real.”

“I’m sorry this happened to you.”

Riccardo blinks his eye a couple of times before he focuses on the man standing at the end of his bed. It’s been ages since he last saw him, even though he’s always been there, in the corner of his consciousness.

“You’re not real. Fuck off.”

The man smiles and Riccardo wants to throw something at him, just to see if he’s corporeal this time around. He used to be, before Riccardo was diagnosed and the meds cut off the edge of realness.

“I’m getting you help.” The man circles around the bed, comes sit in the chair Dr. Buffon was occupying only moments earlier. “They’ll make it better. I should’ve done this sooner.”

“You’ve done more than enough,” Riccardo whispers as the man moves to touch his face, warm fingers ghosting over his cheek feeling so very real. “You did this to me. I hate you. Go away.”

“I’m so sorry.” The words echo in his head, but the vision is already gone.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- As you can see, I've tweaked their ages a bit, since the cluster has to be born all at the same time, and I had very specific ideas of who I wanted to include in this cluster. I'd set them somewhere in the range of late twenties-early thirties.   
>  \- _senpai_ is Japanese for "senior", be it an upperclassman at school or someone more experienced than you at work. It's also a common way of addressing someone who's taken care of you as your senior at one point of your life. I'm leaving it as it is, because the Japanese honorifics are something that basically lose their meaning when translated to another language. I promise you won't get more fangirl Japanese from me!   
>  \- You will come to realize I'm making up lots of sensorium science as I go. This is partly due to the series being cancelled too early before we got all the answers we wanted (although here's to hoping the 2-hour finale will deliver!), and partly due to my terrible memory when it comes to details.


	3. Connection

 

 

 

It starts out with little things.

A dog barking on his porch, but there’s no dog when Cris opens the door. An unfamiliar ringtone waking him up in the middle of the night only to realize his phone is on silent mode. Unexpected bouts of anxiousness, happiness, even arousal that don’t feel like his own. Flashes of faces that somehow seem familiar even though he could swear he’s never seen them before.

(One time Cris wakes up in a hospital bed with half of his face covered in bandages, feeling trapped and alone.

Later on he dismisses this as a regular nightmare. It’s just stress getting to him.)

Once or twice he stops to think he should be more concerned about his mental health, but those moments of clarity usually don’t last long before he is carted off to yet another photo shoot.

He builds strict routine around his modelling jobs – eating, sleeping, and exercising regularly, all the while making sure he still has enough time to be the best possible father to Junior. This is no time to go insane; he has a career and a family to make sure of that.

“Not that one, the colours are all off.” Cris is peering at the computer screen over the shoulder of the photographer, studying the results of their latest shoot.

“Why don’t you leave the choosing to professionals?” The photographer is speaking through his clenched teeth, obviously sick and tired of models telling him how to do his job. Cris can relate, more than used to random people – executives, managers, even fans – marching in thinking they’re the experts of everything.

“Be my guest,” – Cris raises his hands in exaggerated surrender – “Just, not that one, okay?”

It’s another new development: Cris never used to care much about the colour schemes or lighting in his photos – he trusts the professionals he works with, that’s why he chose them in the first place – but lately he’s found himself more drawn to all these small details. Like there’s suddenly a whole scale of colours he never saw before.

An open magazine spread on the computer stand catches his attention. It’s not a fashion magazine like one might expect, but an art journal of some sort. His sister used to read those.

A photo of a painting covers most of the spread, vivid colours clashing uncomfortably and yet somehow they form a perfect harmony as a whole. It might be expressionism. Or maybe impressionism. It’s been years since Cris went to school, and he never really paid attention in art class in the first place.

There’s a smaller photo of a person in the bottom right corner. A short man with a beard and a posture that’s just a little bit hunched, like he’s embarrassed to be photographed. His hair is messy and he’s not quite looking at the camera, a paintbrush in one hand while the other scratches the back of his head.

Cris has this odd feeling of recognition, very similar to the time he ran into that Asian lady in the grocery store when out shopping with Junior, or that one time the rich-looking businessman held the elevator doors for him on the way to his agent’s office.

_‘Lionel Messi Taking the Art World by Storm’_ reads the headline.

“At least I get a name for once, huh?” Cris mutters to himself. He only realizes he’s picked up the magazine when the photographer overhears him and turns to look, eyes going directly to the article.

“You know art?”

“Not really my thing, I’m afraid.” Cris flashes his most charming smile and points at the photo in the corner. “Who is he? I think I’ve seen him somewhere.”

“Leo Messi. I doubt you’ve met him, unless you’ve been to Argentina lately. Based on the article, this award ceremony in the US was his first time outside of the country.”

The guy continues talking – something more about the prestigious award this Messi apparently won some weeks back – but Cris isn’t listening anymore. There’s a memory in the back of his mind, almost at his grasp, but it slips away before he can catch it. Something about this artist, maybe an explanation why his face seems so familiar when obviously they’ve never met?

_“Maybe it’s about time you did,”_ a whisper inside his head suggests, and it’s not Cris’s own voice.

Warm smile and dark brown eyes in the corner of his vision, but when Cris looks over, it’s only his agent with his back turned, busy yelling into his phone because apparently some shoot has been rescheduled and now it clashes with all other commitments they have.

No bearded artists. No smiling mystery men. No Asian ladies in supermarkets.

Cris drops the magazine and heads off to the dressing room, since there’s apparently no reason for any more reshoots for the day. He promised Junior he’d be home in time for dinner, and one glance at his watch tells him he’s a breath away from breaking that promise.

Not tonight.

 

 

 

One of Cris’s favourite times of day – aside from every minute spent with Junior, of course – is the moment of peace and quiet after he’s put his son to bed. With life as hectic as his, he’s learned to appreciate the chance to just sit back in the balcony and think about absolutely nothing.

Although to be fair, recently not thinking hasn’t been that easy, not when all the oddities he’s experiencing keep resurfacing whenever he lets his guard down. Still, he keeps trying, because it’s one of those routines that are supposed to keep his head in the right place.

Tonight, the attempt is unsuccessful as ever, but in Cris’s defence, it’s extremely hard not to think when there’s an unfamiliar woman invading his balcony.

“Told you he’d have a mansion,” she’s saying to no one, smiling smugly at the air on her left.

“Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my house?” Cris is trying to keep his voice down in hopes of not waking up Junior, but it’s not easy. The blonde woman sits down in a chair next to his like she owns the place. “I’m calling the security. I don’t care if you’re a fan or something, this is intrusion of privacy—”

“Relax. I’m not really here,” the woman rests her hand on Cris’s arm and against all odds, it calms him down. “I think we’re scaring him, Leo.”

“Who’s Leo?” Cris asks weakly. He’s feeling overwhelmed, his brain screaming bloody murder even as his body relaxes on its own accord and he leans back in his chair, like chatting with an old friend rather than a home invader.

“Oh for God’s sake, Leo. C’mon you wuss, he can’t even see you!”

“Well, maybe I didn’t wanna scare him like you did!” Another person is now sitting in a chair on Cris’s other side, making a disgruntled face at the woman before his eyes meet Cris’s as if by accident. “Sorry about that, she’s American. No manners whatsoever.”

“Uh huh.” Cris tries to smile, because over the years his smile’s proven to be a great weapon in many excruciatingly uncomfortable situations. Maybe it will work also on Argentinean artists who just happen to wander through your balcony in the middle of the night. “You’re that artist. Messi, right?”

“How come he knows your name?” the woman pipes in before Messi can answer. “You told me you hadn’t actually talked to him yet. Liar.”

“I saw him in a magazine just today.” Cris is looking back and forth between the two, and belatedly he realizes there’s something very familiar about the woman too. “Doesn’t explain why you’re in my house. Or why I shouldn’t call the security.”

“You definitely should, if it makes you feel better.” The woman shrugs and shoots a pointed look at Messi. “I did, when he first showed up in my place uninvited. The police thought I’d gone mad, though. Since he wasn’t actually there and shit.”

“Right,” Cris answers, stretching the vowel in attempt to think of something smart to say. He comes up empty. “So, who are you?”

“I’m Megan. Or Pinoe, whichever you like, I don’t mind.” She points at her companion. “And that’s Leo. We prefer not to use last names – a bit impersonal, all things considered – so drop the ‘Messi’ thing.”

All things considered? Cris would very much like to understand what those _things_ are, and what they have to do with all the mental stuff he’s been going through in the past couple of months.

“Nice to meet you?” Leo’s greeting comes out as a question and Cris doesn’t shake the offered hand. Leo looks disappointed and Cris feels irrationally bad about it.

“I guess you haven’t met the others yet, then?” Megan asks, patting Cris’s arm comfortingly. Cris knows that rationally thinking, he shouldn’t allow the physical contact, but for some reason it doesn’t feel like an intrusion. “We’ve all been there. You’re taking it surprisingly well, to be honest. I was screaming my head off when I first met Leo. And Nigel almost _kicked_ my head off.”

At the mention of Nigel’s name, Cris remembers the businessman holding the elevator. He doesn’t know why he knows, but suddenly he’s certain they’re the same person. Megan is smiling at him, the realization probably visible all over his face.

“And the Asian woman?” he asks carefully, half-knowing what the answer will be even before Leo confirms his suspicion, “Homare? Oh yes, she did mention running into you.”

“It took us almost as long to connect with her as it took to find you. Probably because you’re both control freaks,” Megan continues, now smiling fondly. “She’s amazing, though, isn’t she? I was so worried I’d be stuck in a fucking sausage fest for the rest of my life.”

Cris’s head is spinning, but he hangs onto Megan’s words, hoping to find some rational explanation there. “Connecting? Rest of your life? What the hell is this?”

It takes Cris by surprise when it’s Leo who answers when Megan’s the one who’s been doing most of the talking. “It’s called a cluster. It’s, like, a really strong telepathic connection between a specific group of people. Ricky called it a shared mind-sphere. A next step in evolution.”

“You know Ricky, right?” Megan interrupts, “We’ve all seen him, at least back when it all started.”

“Dark hair, big smile, obnoxiously pretty?” Cris asks uncertainly, looking back and forth between the two again.

“No, that would be you,” Megan says with a teasing smirk at the same time Leo confirms, “Yep, that’s our Ricky.”

“So, this cluster thing—” Cris cuts the sentence short, because he realizes he’s not quite ready to believe them yet.

“Our cluster,” Leo says, using his fingers to count the people, “is the three of us, plus Homare and Nigel. And Ricky is— well, he’s like a father figure of sorts, I guess.”

“Really youthful, really pretty father,” Megan quips. “He’s much better at explaining all the science-y stuff, if you’re into that. Apparently his cluster’s got a geneticist of their own, so he knows all this really geeky stuff by proxy.

“Oh yeah, it turns out that as a cluster, we can borrow our skills to each other. Very convenient, especially when you’re an out-of-shape starving artist who has to run really fast to catch the last train and you just happen to share a cluster with the world-renowned footballer—“

Leo cuts her off, probably so she can’t tell more embarrassing stories about him. “And we speak lots of languages. Like, I now know Spanish, English, Japanese, Dutch—”

“Portuguese, apparently,” Cris fills in, although it’s mostly to stop the waves of information from washing right over his head.

“You’re Portuguese? Cool.” Leo’s gaze on him is intense and Cris feels his face heating up despite himself. “Though we could’ve also picked that up from Ricky, I guess. It’d be silly if we weren’t speaking the same language as him, since he made us and all.”

“Made us?”

“Our cluster, Ricky created it. I can’t really explain it though, you’ve gotta ask him for details.”

“So how can I meet him? Where is he?”

“He’s around, pops in to check on us every now and then.” Megan’s voice startles Cris from his impromptu staring contest with Leo. There’s something about Leo that doesn’t sit quite right with Cris – like the artist is somehow challenging him with every word, every look, even when he’s not really saying anything of the sort.

Leo leans back in his chair, looking at the clear sky, counting the constellations he recognizes off the top of his head. Cris finds it only mildly disturbing that he knows this is what Leo is doing – compared to all the other information he’s still trying to sort out in his head, a little mind reading doesn’t really seem such a big deal.

“He always comes to us,” Leo says without moving his gaze from the stars. “The cluster, we can all visit each other without a problem. But Ricky’s different, it’s like we can only tell where he is when he wants to be found. I guess he’s got his own cluster to worry about, you know.”

He looks much better than the small photo in the corner of an art journal.

“I could teach you, how to visit us.” Leo’s eyes are finally back on Cris. “You should meet Nigel and Homare. It doesn’t seem fair to keep you from them, when we’re all in this together.”

“Why’d I need a teacher?” Cris retorts even though another part of him wants to accept the offered help without question. “I’m sure I’ll figure it out on my own now that I know what’s going on.”

Leo grins at him and offers his hand again. “I’m sure you will. But it’ll be faster if we give you a push to the right direction.” Cris is tempted to refuse the handshake for the second time that night. “Now, I didn’t catch your name yet. I’m Leo Messi.”

“Cristiano.” Cris takes the offered hand after a moment of hesitation, and suddenly he’s not on his balcony anymore, but sitting on an unmade bed in an unfamiliar apartment.

It looks like a bachelor pad turned art studio – there are painting supplies and dirty clothes littering every inch of the floor and the walls are covered with colourful paintings. It feels like each painting is reaching right into Cris’s subconscious, and now he knows why he’s been seeing so many new colours lately. He’s seeing the world through Leo’s eyes.

He’s experiencing the world like his cluster experiences it. A shared mind-sphere, that’s what Leo called it.

“Seriously? A little warning would be nice,” Megan grumbles as she materializes, sitting on top of what Cris assumes is Leo’s kitchen table, although the layout of the apartment is still rather unclear to him. “I mean, I know he’s your type and all, but running off the moment you get a chance? Not cool, dude.”

The words barely register in Cris’s mind, because he’s just noticed a common theme in almost all the paintings propped up against the wall, paint still drying: abstract and distorted as they may be, it’s still Cris’s own face staring back at him, painting after painting after painting.

“See? I’ve been waiting to meet you ever since our cluster was born.” Leo’s smile looks a bit sheepish now, well aware how stalkerish this might come across in any other situation. “I did paint Pinoe and Nigel and Homare, too. But mostly it’s been you. Must’ve been that conceited part of you pushing through to me, huh?”

“Shut up,” Cris retorts and punches Leo’s arm gently, still disoriented with their sudden change of surroundings and the realization that this cluster deal truly is real. “Fine, you can teach me how to control it. But some other night, okay? I need to get back home to my kid now.”

He is back on the balcony, alone, as soon as he finishes the sentence.

He can nearly convince himself that he fell asleep and dreamed it all, except someone’s pulling on the edge of his consciousness, and he can almost hear the words: _“Some other night, then. It’s a date.”_


End file.
